Learning Spanish colors, organically

In response to anybody who questions how early is too early to start learning a second language:  It can NEVER be too early!  In fact, the earlier the better.  Having taught students all the way from kindergarten through adults, I can tell you that anxiety levels (about the process of learning a language) are different depending on the age of the student.  The older a student, the more anxiety, stress and difficulty.  The younger the student, they barely realize they are learning something different or new.  Because it is ALL new to them!

Early Childhood news has a great article that talks about different ways of learning a foreign language including discussion about how language acquisition is easier for youngsters.  The U.S. has it all wrong in waiting to teach foreign languages until high school.  Now, there are many reasons for that, and that is a separate blog for another time.  But what inspired me in this article was the number of examples given for how students can naturally hone in on a second language through a more natural process, much like we learn our first language.  Howard Gardner and his Theory of Multiple Intelligences (1983 and 1989) are appropriately referenced in the article, supporting that we all have different learning styles, stronger in some, weaker in others.  So here are my "Gardner-inspired" suggestions for helping students learn colors vocabulary.  Most of them are ways to build the Spanish language into your life as it already exists, making the process much more natural and sensible.

Linguistic Intelligence:  Using written and spoken language to learn.  Here is a listening exercise for identifying colors.  Color-by-numbers have students reading the words at an elementary level.  "Listen and click" is a great way to practice the colors by hearing and reading the questions.  Then, El Arco Iris is an interactive story for students to listen and read and identify the colors of the rainbow.

Logical-Mathematical Intelligence:  Have students learn the colors in order of the rainbow.  Or associate numbers with colors:  If 2 = rojo and 3 = amarillo, what color would 2 + 3 = ?  ¡Anaranjado!   Use geometrical shapes (cubes, pyramids, cylinders) with Play-doh... have them create shapes in certain colors.  Use LEGOs to build numbers out of certain colors (also a Kinesthetic learning exercise!) and have students do the math problems like above.

Musical Intelligence:  Students learn and repeat a song, or even better... create one themselves!  Those who play instruments can associate a color term with a certain note.  Call out the colors, they play those notes.  Or vice versa, play the note and call out the associated colors.

Visual-Spatial Intelligence:  Wordle is a fabulous site to make word clouds that are enticing for visual learners.  Take the Wordle at the top of this blog (or go make your own), then print and color the words accordingly.  The position of these words is something that students can visualize spatially as they're recalling vocabulary.

Body-Kinesthetic Intelligence:  Color label items in your house.  These language cards can be used to cut apart, spread out and use as a matching or memory game.  Or, how about color tag in Spanish?  Go to the grocery store and call out a color and have kids find something that color and put it in the cart.  Make a Spanish rainbow cake.  The possibilities are endless, since colors are everywhere!

Social Intelligence:  Use the language cards socially.  Have a parent/mentor draw a card from a pile, say the color in Spanish and with crayons the student colors with that color.  Then switch roles so the student becomes "mentor."  For larger groups, give each a multi-colored toy.  Students partner with each other to tell what colors their toy is.  They trade toys before moving on to find another partner.        

Introspective Intelligence:  Student practices with the language cards alone, quietly.  Students can make two piles:  one pile they've mastered, the other they haven't so they know to where to shift focus.  The cards can be laminated and stored away in labeled drawers so they can be easily retrieved later.

Naturalistic Intelligence:  This is about how students use nature as a learning process.  Grow a garden in the summer and add the Spanish colors on the vegetation markers:  carrots (zanahorias):  anaranjado  peas (guisantes):  verde    roses (rosas):  rosado.  Another idea:  do a scavenger hunt, having students find something in nature of each different color.  Or play I Spy at the beach!  In Spanish, the game starts as a popular rhyme:

Veo, veo.  (I spy.)

¿Qué ves?  (What do you spy?)

Una cosita.  (A little thing.)

¿Y qué cosita es?  (What is it?)

"Veo algo morado..."  (I spy something purple...)

Bottom line:  Osmotically surround yourself with the language!